Despite being touted as a potential World Champion, Hikaru Nakamura has had one obvious obstacle to this goal. Magnus Carlsen. He has an awful score against the current World Champion, failing to defeat him in the 30 games they have played at long time controls. This run included 12 losses, and was the most compelling evidence against Nakamru’s title ambitions.But Nakamrua finally put a dent in this argument, by beating Carlsen in the first round of the Bilbao Masters. Carlsen played the middle game with a certain disregard forking safety, and it came back to bite him as Nakamura was able to exploit a pin down the g file to grab a big advantage. Even then there was a chance that Nakamura might throw it all away (as he has done in the past) but he kept up the pressure and Carlsen resigned when facing a forced checkmate.